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Re: Most useful microphones for nature recording.

Subject: Re: Most useful microphones for nature recording.
From: "Avocet" madl74
Date: Fri Mar 8, 2013 10:11 am ((PST))
> A highly directional mic may isolate a specific subject better in
> certain circumstances, but I do not see how that effects comparable
> perceived distances.

John,

My long Sennheisers have similar noise specs to the short ones, and
are among the quietist of mics, but I wasn't talking technical.

Whether it is picking up one voice in a crowd, or an actor on location
before the era of good radio mics, or a busker in the street, vox
pops, a distant brass band, or even picking out one bird in a woodland
full of yelling passerines and reverb, the "fetch" of a mic is all
important.

A parabola picks out a single object better than any gunmic and brings
in bird calls close and clean and has the best fetch. I knew a
wildlife recordist who had a wheel on his parabola so he could use it
as a wheelbarrow, but it was still worth lugging about. Thanke to
Telinga, we can now have portable parabolas.

With an MKH-816 I can select what is in its narrowish pickup angle,
and it is the way the object then sounds "closer" over the general
hubbub, which is the "fetch". My woodpecker 60 metres away (200
feet) would have sounded very distant if I had been using cardioids
instead of MKH-416 gunmics. It is the equivalent of a 100mm lens lens
over a fisheye.

David

David Brinicombe
North Devon, UK
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum - Ambrose Bierce







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